Neutral Point of View

Unlike Wikipedia we do not strive to present a Neutral Point of View in pages. The value of diversity in a community based wiki helps to present many points of view and opinions that are all valuable and reflective of the community. Freedom of speech is tied to a certain expectation about responsibility of speech; you can't have one without the other.

From Mace Ranch Park:

No need for a neutral point of view, but a little balance to the bias is a good idea. NPOV doesn't allow for things like reviews or blunt commentary (which is why Wikipedia is NPOV, and DavisWiki isn't). Unbalanced bias isn't a good thing either. I like the term "Cumulative POV": the different bias (and opinions) of all the editors eventually removes the barbs, but not the points. Put in a point about the owls, make a counter point, and be done. Anger over the conversion of a wilderness area to a groomed park (or enjoying the new facilities of the park) is part of the community and certainly should be part of the entry. — jw

It seems as though there are three options here:

neutral point of view (NPOV), which can leave out much of what is interesting and important, assuming it is even possible,
one point of view (OPOV), which can be misleadingly one-sided, and
cumulative point of view (CPOV), which allows expression of different sides of an issue.

I'd be the first one to argue for the CPOV. It's amazing how falsely compelling an argument can be if one has only heard one side. Yet what I am seeing recently are people saying that this is not an NPOV wiki, but what they put in its place is an OPOV rather than a CPOV. —CovertProfessor

A quick count (rough) was 11 good, 3 neutral, 3 neg comment/reviews. The term "most people" implies not all - adding "but not all" is silly. I'm against weasel words, and think that has little to do with the POV of the article in question. Personally, I'm for CPOV as well, but there's a balance between cumulative opinion, and weasel words being added to balance everything. This edit transition is what I mean. They basically say the same thing, but what it was edited to is more smooth, much less weasel-like, and is still the accurate representation of the comments. -Edwins

I suggest you count a little harder (or if edits were made after your count, my apologies) but I am getting closer to 9 up and 6 down when it comes to the food. There seems to be a general appreciation for the quality of service but a fast burger with a smile isn't necessarily a good burger. I should also note that I am giving you both the veggie burger and the only in SB comments and not giving myself Rob's which was kinda hard to tell.

Regardless, my main problem here is that the main body of an article has a feeling of additional credibility than the rest of the comments and can easily taint peoples view when they first visit. I don't see how keeping the body to basic facts while opinions stay in comments undermines the nonNPOV aspect of the site. This way weasel words aren't really even needed because the cumulative aspect of the comments does the job. - CF

Because editors are free to add their opinion directly to the entry here on DavisWiki. Comments are generally slowly integrated into the entry itself or, after they are over a year old and have started to pile up, they are moved to a comment archive to make room for more. Talk pages are deleted when done. The entry stays around and evolves over time as the subject does. If you have an opinion, feel free to add it to the entry... then somebody else comes along and does the same thing. I'm not saying that these are rules, but they are rules of thumb that have been developed over time as what works. You are free to avoid adding your opinion to an entry, but another editor is also free to add their opinion. What causes problems is when people start removing opinions. NPOV works for Wikipedia because they are trying to encyclopedically document things, which is a very worthy goal. DavisWiki isn't documenting "things"... it is a resource to the community about the people and things within the community written from the community perspective. That involves a heck of a lot of documentation and opinion. Different goals, different editorial policies, different results. Jack in the Box notes that the hash browns are "hot and greasy like a construction worker in midday summer", which captures their poetic essence in a very Davis-like way. Davis is full of poetry and art and strong opinions. The wiki also contains those things... which means it is doing a good job of capturing the whimsy, the anger, the attitude, the essence... and the opinions... of Davis itself. — JabberWokky

I think this page is a good example of CPOV — it captures the multiple points of view without weasel words. Yes? —CovertProfessor
I agree for the most part here. I in no way way want cause a dilution of the community flavor aspect of the wiki. There are 3 things that I would like to point out though. First, the pages JW and CP mention have had time to gather comments to come to a general overall opinion. It really seems to me at least to be misleading to write quality assessments over all before a fair amount of info has been gathered. This one is easy though, someone else just needs to edit it down and then up again when comments are added, heck I will probably give it a shot myself today. Secondly some pages become more personal battlegrounds that really end up goinng nowhere. Most of the revert wars I have seen since I began reading the wiki have been a see-saw between one guy's lopsided POV and another's. I think this gets into your point that the removing of opinions is the major problem but it also gets into my third concern. There seems to be a scale of people who use the wiki. Super frequent editors and page creators, generally active participants but not frequent to the point of recognition, commentators, and non member users who just look at the pages. The concern I have here is that the people who are on all the time have a disproportionate say compared to others. I think the general population would normally fall into the commentator to lightly active participant range and are not willing to do major edits of body sections. Really I think my reaction here was to the power trips of some editors who ignore the possibility of other opinion. I think CP has a good take on it. Thought I would just through on some more food for thought -CF

Yeah. It's a major problem of not ever really being "consensus". There's been major revert wars over random stuff over the last couple of years. It's claimed to be consensus, but typically it's whoever is loudest/most persistent. Even in a "1 vs Majority" type revert war (and I'm talking about before SteveO used the wiki), the one would often end up getting mostly his or her way, or at the least what they wanted. That sucks, and so does the fact that whoever is most persistent 'wins'. Then both sides end up editing the page to shreds trying to influence their way, and the page ends up being hurt by it. Thinking of Ikea and the Sam's Med Politics pages in particular. -ES

I think there's more than three options. Using a phrase like "CPOV" makes it seem like it's compulsory inclusion of all points of view, too, which is not always desirable. I think it's important to not be dogmatic about this either way, and just try and be fair, objective, and interesting to read. —PhilipNeustrom

In characterizing CPOV above, I did not mean to imply that including all points of view was compulsory (note I said, "allows" for expression of different points of view). What I was objecting to was people insisting on OPOV in the name of non-NPOV. This was particularly striking in the Habit Burger case because of the contrast between the reviews and the main body text. (My count of opinions is closer to CF's than ES's). The description can include more than one point of view. —CovertProfessor

My objection was to how it was included. I love the Sophia's page because it does it best in my opinion. Sophia's Thai Kitchen was the first Thai restaurant in Davis and many consider it to be the best food stop in the entire town. At the same time, some consider their food to be the most mediocre of the city's five Thai restaurants. While these polarizing opinions exist and are hotly debated, there can be no argument to the popularity of the establishment, where wait times on any given night can stretch to 45 minutes or more. It includes two vastly different opinions in the main body, and it works great. This works fine due to the vast amount of comments and over time people integrating them into the body. The problem I object to is that the recent trend seems to be that as soon as someone summarizes some opinions into the text, certain people attempt to balance it by adding a counter. Some bias is ok. Opinions in the article are encouraged, if they're fair. (By fair, I mean representative of the comments and not just someone adding their own). Even if you were to say "9 to 6" (and I'd disagree with 6), the majority still were favorable. I think "generally considered" or something similar is enough of a qualifier. "Most people, but not all". "Some people like X, but some people do not." There are people editing in such things as a counter to many pages, and to me it seems redundant and unnecessarily silly in most cases. There are obviously places where it's wanted, such as the Sophias example quoted, but on most pages with far far less comments.. -ES

I agree with you about the Sophia's page — so, apparently we agree on what the ideal should look like. Where we seem to disagree on, then, is what the existing comments on Habit Burger are saying. I'll say right up front that I haven't been to Habit Burger yet, and one of main reasons for that is that, to my eyes, the comments don't seem very promising. But, that is neither here nor there — we're talking about non-NPOV, not Habit Burger. Perhaps, then, what we're striving for is RPOV (Representational Point of View)? And what you and I are disagreeing about is whether the text represented the existing comments? —CovertProfessor

RPOV is exactly like what the wiki has strived for (cumulatively based on comments/edits).

Agreed. It's hard to talk about things like this because when you summarize "what works", or "here's how we've done it", it makes it seem like a hard and fast regulations. That's the reason I specifically said that nothing I stated was a rule, but rather a rule of thumb. I glean my ideas from observation — i.e., keeping what you say opinion free is okay, adding multiple opinions usually works, but removing opinions tends to cause problems. That's why I call it de facto, because the mechanism of the current community tends to work that way. Here's another observation: this topic pops up about once every year, and it seems to be the community of active editors checking each other's opinion about opinions. I don't think archiving this or summarizing it would help or even be a good thing to do: next year, it would be ignored and the whole debate start again with slightly different faces. I think that's probably a good thing. We — as editors — sometimes try to make things easy, meaning we would like comfortably solid rules, simple shortcuts and when somebody gets a burr up their butt, we would like them just to accept what everybody else is saying and just shut up. Not making things easy means we have to actually work at every single action... we have to put in effort rather than always slap a macro band-aid on it... we have to actually talk to each other and resolve issues for real rather than just sweeping the problem — and the person — under the rug. Yes, it is harder, but that's the way it works if we really want to maintain a truly open editorship. We have to all learn to come to an agreement (happy or not) on every single edit. Damn, that's a monumental task, and one that we are accomplishing with incredible, near unprecedented success. If you doubt it, look at heavily authoritarian sites with heavy fisted administrators and long "Site Rules", and consider how much grand high dicketry goes on at those sites. From a practical view, the reason there isn't NPOV here is because we're all opinionated, we're the ones writing the content, and we're all equal as editors. If you want to call what we have CPOV, APOV, ZPOV, it doesn't matter... what we really have is a bunch of men and women all working together, and where we disagree, we find some way of getting along. Sometimes we make friends along the way, sometimes we find a person who we respect, and sometimes we grind our teeth at night as we think of the stupidity of some of our fellow editors. Just like an Italian family dinner, we're all at the table shouting, whispering, kicking under the table, gossiping and periodically kicking up arguments... and somehow we're also calming them down and finding a solution together. We don't have any type of "POV". What we have is each other, and the things we each write. Is it any wonder at all that an entry on a high class corporate fast food joint would have a myriad of conflicting editorial input? Of course it does... and it is hard to resolve them. But we will, and the end result will likely reflect a bunch of different editors. That's why I called it de facto: when that entry tumbles to a resting spot, it will have had everybody tossing their flavor into the pot. Not because that's The Law, but just how things happen to wind up getting accomplished around here. Now, somebody want to pass the spaghetti, post some pretty photos, hand me a new napkin, and bitch about what constitutes "authentic food" again? I think that... well... back to dinner... —JabberWokky

Comments:

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2007-08-29 12:36:01 IMHO, the problem with non-NPOV entries is that it's often hard to tell the biased from the unbiased. Some pages are balanced, others are not and the blend is deemed acceptable bceause we don't do NPOV here. IMHO, we should strive to provide an informative and neutral section of a page and then a separate area where comments, accusations, flames, trolls, are clearly in a space that indicates opinion. That would let me read pages and believe the information in them, as opposed to having to figure out if someone wrote the description from a biased point of view and not knowing if it was true or not. Agreeded upon text can be read as agreed upon. CPOV or other less-than-agreeded upon text could be read as informative, but not necessarily a complete set of views and may not be taken as absolute truth. Right now, it's the blur that cause the problem, not that multiple expressions exist. —WesHardaker

That would be my sense of how things ought to be done, too. Since others seem to feel strongly about keeping opinions in the main text, I'm urging that when there seems to be a fair amount of disagreement, that the disagreement be represented in the main text. But I wanted to register my support for your POV. :-) —CovertProfessor

2007-08-29 13:25:39 Can we somehow limit revert power? —JamesSchwab

Agreed. I'd even say that one revert per page per person per day would be plenty. If someone is reverting the same page multiple times, I'd say their issue would be best served on a talk page. —JoseBleckman

2007-08-30 00:29:40 DWiki needs an overhaul if it doesn't care about POV, because there seems to be an general understanding that POV belongs in the comment sections of a page. This would be fine except that DWiki has such a messy commenting platform. There's no threading, pages very quickly end up being tl;dr, and, yes, we need moderators who are ready to drop the banhammer at a moment's notice. As the wiki grows and there's no set standardization, things will just get worse and worse. —JesseSingh

2007-08-30 07:51:52 I don't think there is a general understanding of that. The above argues that negative statements in the text are acceptable if they're deemed the majority opinion or haven't seen controversy. Resturants can be labeled as "over-priced", etc, at the whim of the author and it's deemed acceptable until challenged and acceptable after that with rough common agreement. However, the wording choices are still an opinion being represented in the main text. —WesHardaker
Then the system is a failure. Most people visiting the wiki don't edit the wiki. The majority of users who do spend most of their "edits" leaving comments, perpetuating e-drama, and editing vanity pages. The meaningful changes are made by a small handful of people. Now throw POV into the mix and it gets further muddled. I'm willing to bet all the money in my pocket versus all the money in your pocket that most people who do "use" this site use it as I do: To find the locations of institutions, their closing times, and links to their website. If you're here for a deeper scale of information, you're really relying on the whim of an inconsistent horde. Literally, on whoever edited it last. The rest of us don't have time to be babysitters. —JesseSingh